While employers might find it difficult to know which trend to embrace, the benefits of letting employees work when they wanted as a well-researched one.
“I would say that something like chrono working would be one of those where there are decades of robust evidence that does show that some people are more productive in the morning and other people are less productive in the morning,” she said.
Chrono working is where employees work to their circadian rhythm. It’s been touted as the next big thing in workplaces - an alternative to a 9-5 workday which was no longer fit for purpose, Morrison said.
“It’s become pretty apparent since the pandemic that there are lots of alternate ways of working which has really raised awareness that suiting work and job design to individuals can be really beneficial to a lot of people.”
This includes teenagers whose body clocks alter during puberty, which makes it harder for them to fall asleep at night.
“Most teenagers work better with a bit of a sleep-in and they really struggle to get up early. The shift is about two hours. So, if you had a 9 o’clock bedtime, for example, that would shift to 11pm. You end up with kids in sleep debt if you have kids that still have to get up at 7 in the morning to get to school,” she said.
Congestion could also be tackled in big cities if people didn’t have to commute during peak hour, she said.
“If you could have start times staggered through the day to suit workers and organisations, then traffic congestion would be lessened, and rush hours might be a thing of the past.”
Morrison said there was a danger that organisations who didn’t offer flexible working weren’t recruiting the right people either.
“Including things like job sharing and flex time, and part-time work within an organisation is a really good way of making sure that you can kind of get the best people in your organisation, as opposed to just the people that have the most hours free, which is not necessarily going to be the people that are going to do the job as well as they possibly can,” she said.
Listen to the full episode for more on how workplaces could adapt - and why one Kiwi-born boss is pushing back against coffee breaks.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Susie Nordqvist, a former presenter and producer for TVNZ and Newshub. She began her career as a newspaper reporter and was a finalist for best newsreader at this year’s NZ Radio & Podcast Awards for her work at Newstalk ZB.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
